A Visit to Don Otavio

Over the course of the book, the two women are robbed, made to wait endlessly, fed meaningless promises, witness a brutal act of cruelty on a bus in Michoacán and an attempted murder in Jalisco, but Bedford's composure and compassion remain intact.

I relish Bedford's ability to communicate endless misunderstandings so that they provoke reflection on cultural barriers rather than a snooty tittering at Mexican quirkiness. Toward the end of the book, Bedford takes ill and lets us smile at some of the local health lore: "I lit a candle, heated a spoon in the flame, and pressed it against my cheeks and forehead ... After an hour of this treatment I began to feel some slight relief."

Guadalupe came in. "What are you doing" she said. "Don't you know what a candle and spoon are for? You are not so ignorant. You must wait until you are alone and then you must light the candle and hold the spoon and say your prayers backwards."

Bedford's illness is eventually cured with penicillin, but there remains a mood of depression -- or to fit in more with the parlance of the times, a stultifying melancholy. This is also something I can relate to, after the exaltation of being immersed in the glories of other cultures and landscapes, there may come a time of embaras de richesse, and a temporary emptiness. After straining the boundaries of the self, one may feel numbed by a lack of response.

One reviewer refers to Bedford's "brisk sense of the absurd" which for me is a charming and generous trait that leaves me wondering at all our human follies.

There are many directions in which to take a reading of the book, but as a simple and entertaining chronicle of a foreigner's experience in Mexico, A Visit to Don Otavio is a rare gem, poised, vivacious and with a delicate and finely-tuned sense of humor.

Barbara Kastelein is a Mexico City based journalist, currently writing a book about the Acapulco cliff divers.